Apple Music Download or Stream my purchased music?

[kagharaht]

Silly me. I recently did an Erase All Contents and settings on my iMac M3 and never restored from Time Machine. I was wondering why my Music folder is only 2GB but all music plays fine. I had at least 60GB of purchased music. Mixed Purchased from the Store and Imported from my CD's. I'm still subscribed to iTunes Match despite having Apple Music Subscription. So all my music has been streaming on my new iMac all this time. I can redownload them all back to the iMac I suppose or should I keep them in the cloud?

 

[CharlesShaw]

I remember the early days when we had to make our own backups of iTunes purchases or potentially lose them forever (there were stories of a lucky few getting Apple to let them re-download their purchases), so now that those days are gone, I never worry about having my purchases downloaded, unless I want the music synced to my Apple Watch.

 

[CMoore515]

I stream from my MacBook Pro. Ditched Match a long time ago as I felt it was redundant.

 

[CharlesShaw]

I stream from my MacBook Pro. Ditched Match a long time ago as I felt it was redundant.

I used to pay for Match so I could create and maintain playlists of iTunes purchases on any of my devices, but dropped it last year and don't miss it.

 

[kagharaht]

I do have a previous older TM backup on another portable drive stored away. I see the Music folder there with all the Music I burned, purchased and custom ones from independent artist and so on. I keep iTunes Match so that custom music or independent ones not in Apple Library are uploaded on the cloud and can be played on other devices. I could be wrong, I didn't think Apple Music subscription does that also.

 

[WebHead]

Stream to listen, download to back up (even though I've been relying solely on my iCloud Library for years, against Apple's advice)